GOOGLE: We Take Back All That 'Don't Be Evil' Stuff — Now It's All About Us

Don't be evil? Nah--we
only said that when we were young and
idealistic.ehud
via Flickr

My, how things have changed.

In light of Google's recent decision to put its own Google+ social service results above all other
results in its search engine, it is amusing to contrast today's
Google with the "don't be evil" Google of a few years ago.

In an interview with Playboy prior to the IPO, Google founder Larry
Page was explaining why Google would never put its
content above content from elsewhere because that would be "a
conflict of interest, analogous to taking money for search
results."

Don't believe it? Read for yourself:

PLAYBOY: With the addition of e-mail, Froogle—your new shopping
site—and Google news, plus your search engine, will Google become
a portal similar to Yahoo, AOL or MSN? Many Internet companies were
founded as portals. It was assumed that the more services
you provided, the longer people would stay on your website and
the more revenue you could generate from advertising and pay
services.

PAGE: We built a business on the opposite message. We
want you to come to Google and quickly find what you want. Then
we’re happy to send you to the other sites. In fact, that’s the
point. The portal strategy tries to own all of the
information.

PLAYBOY: Portals attempt to create what they call sticky content
to keep a user as long as possible.

PAGE: That’s the problem. Most portals show their own
content above content elsewhere on the web. We feel that’s a
conflict of interest, analogous to taking money for search
results. Their search engine doesn’t necessarily provide
the best results; it provides the portal’s results. Google
conscientiously tries to stay away from that. We want to get you
out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible. It’s a
very different model.